Susan Smith

Professor Susan J. Smith, FBA, AcSS, FRSE is Mistress of Girton College, and Honorary Professor of Geography at Cambridge University. She was previously Professor of Geography and a Director of the Institute of Advanced Study at Durham University; before that she held the Ogilvie Chair of Geography at the University of Edinburgh.

She is a graduate of Oxford University (St Anne’s and Nuffield Colleges) and has enjoyed visiting positions at the University of California, Los Angeles, the European University Institute, Oxford University, the Australian National University, and RMIT University, Melbourne, where she is currently an Adjunct Professor.

Professor Smith’s research embraces the interdisciplinary world of housing studies, using questions about the cost, character and meaning of homes to address the problem of inequality and advance the pursuit of justice. In a series of projects spanning two decades and three continents, Professor Smith has: questioned the inequalities embedded in residential segregation; exposed the insecurities underpinning victimisation and fear of crime; recognised the challenge of housing for health; and confronted the tension between markets and an ethic of care.

For the past few years her work has focussed on the character of, and links between, housing, mortgage and financial markets. Several projects are part of an ongoing collaboration with RMIT which draw comparisons between the housing and mortgage markets of the UK and Australia.

Professor Smith’s research is funded by research councils, government and charities. In addition to writing for a general readership she has published more than 100 scholarly articles and several books. Most recently she has co-edited the Blackwell Companion to the Economics of Housing (Wiley-Blackwell 2010), and is Editor-in-Chief of the International Encyclopaedia of Housing and Home (Elsevier 2012).